SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘I’m not that easy, you know. I need a really good meal before I let you have your wicked way.’

  Pace stood up and pulled her into his arms, kissing her hard. Despite her words, she gave in immediately and returned his kiss passionately.

  ‘I’m glad you mentioned food,’ Pace said, smiling, ‘I haven’t been slaving over a hot stove for the last hour to have you turn up without your appetite.’

  ‘Sounds intriguing.’

  ‘Shall we?’ he asked. He stepped away from her embrace and grabbed her hand. Without explaining, he led her down the tube until he nearly got back to the open hatch. Just before they got there, he stopped and popped open a small door set into the plastic wall of the tunnel. The door led them outside, onto the open roof of the habitation disc.

  The last time Pace had been out there, he had been desperately trying to shoot down a pair of attacking helicopters, using only a Second World War submachine gun. He had been less than successful and was extremely lucky to survive the encounter.

  ‘You old romantic,’ she breathed softly, allowing herself to be led around to the other side of the roof where a blanket had been laid out, loaded with dishes, plates, glasses and a champagne bucket filled to overflowing with ice. A bottle of Dom Perignon champagne sat smugly within the ice, waiting.

  ‘I try, but only for you,’ he said, giving a little bow. ‘How could you think that I’d let you and your stomach down,’ he added, feigning a hurt tone.

  A few feet away from the blanket was a round, cast iron fire-pit, standing on a large tripod base. The wide bowl of this portable campfire was half filled with a mixture of charcoal and small kindling.

  Pace could have laid a circular grill over the coals, to use it as a barbeque, but he only wanted the fire tonight. The food needed to be better than a few steaks or burgers.

  Sarah settled herself onto the blanket and watched Pace light the fire. He tossed in a few paraffin blocks to get it going and very soon the entire pit was filled with dancing, cracking flames that chased away the darkness and set the mood perfectly. With the darkness came a deepening chill, so the pit served another purpose of warming their picnic and keeping away any interested insects.

  Pace popped the champagne cork into a cloth and poured it into two, long-stemmed crystal glasses. Handing her one, he watched as she took a sip of the cold, fizzy liquid. Swallowing a taster from his own glass, he set about uncovering a range of tasty dishes.

  To start, there were king prawns in their shells, cooked in lemon and garlic butter, finished with a garnish of parsley and sage. Then came fillet chicken breasts in a double-cream, white wine and mushroom sauce, spiced with red chilli and paprika, complimented by warm, honey roast potatoes, garlic bread and a fresh green salad. The aromas mingled deliciously together with the wood smoke.

  As they polished off the prawns and moved on to the main dishes, spooning healthy portions onto their plates, conversation turned to Doyle McEntire’s new project and to why Pace needed to get involved. Sarah knew a little bit, but her father had not shared too much detail with her at the time. As she had never thought it would directly concern her, she hadn’t pressed him.

  Now, she wanted to know it all.

  ‘So go on then,’ she opened, taking another sip of the delicious champagne, ‘tell me what this new project is all about. Now that I’m coming along, I feel a lot better about it, I have to say.’

  Pace nodded. ‘It all started with an old naval notebook, a diary if you like,’ he explained.

  ‘My dad showed me a copy,’ she nodded. ‘I only took a quick look at the time but he said it might lead to a big stink in the future if we didn’t find it first.’

  ‘It?’ asked Pace.

  Sarah smiled. ‘He didn’t tell me what it was, at the time. Just that it would mean an ocean search, somewhere off the coast of Africa.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ agreed Pace. ‘Let me tell you what I know. Your father received a call from whoever within the British government gives the McEntire Corporation their covert work. An old submariner’s diary had been forwarded to the Admiralty by the Foreign Office, after it came into their possession, apparently discovered on an old corpse in the deserts of Namibia. The diary belonged to an officer who had served in the Royal Navy during the First World War.’

  ‘I didn’t know we were fighting in Africa in the First World War?’

  ‘The main battlefields were in Europe, true, but I’ll come on to that. Nothing strange in an old diary, you might think, but it turned out to be more complicated than just an interesting historical document.’

  ‘Go on.’ Sarah could feel her interest level rising.

  ‘How about the fact that the man who wrote the diary vanished in 1916, on a secret mission for the war effort, linked to a project called Scorpion?’

  ‘Interesting,’ she agreed. ‘Still, it was a century ago. Why would anyone care today?’ she asked.

  ‘Because,’ he added slowly, ‘with him disappeared several tons of neatly crated gold ingots and whatever information that exists about Scorpion.’

  ‘If it was a British secret project, won’t all those files have been made public years ago? We should be able to look up every detail.’ She smiled, excited at the prospect of a good, old-fashioned treasure hunt. ‘I can understand the need to get the gold back but that isn’t something we would normally do, is it? If I understand the company role now, we only go in where MI5 and MI6 can’t. This seems pretty tame stuff.’

  Pace nodded agreement. ‘There are no records anywhere about this project, even in the most secret files that every government keeps tucked away. Remember, the McEntire Corporation has access to those secret files. Nothing exists to give any clue as to the nature of the project.’

  ‘So was it a weapon? Must have been, right? A secret weapon, or vehicle, something like that?’ Sarah dispelled a bizarre mental image of a scorpion-shaped tank.

  ‘We don’t know.’ He paused for effect, then added slowly. ‘Except for one tantalising snippet gleaned from the newspapers of the day.’

  Sarah shot him a look. ‘Really? There is no record in the archives because it was so secret but the papers got hold of information about it?’

  He shook his head, suddenly grave. ‘This refers to an article in a paper a few weeks after the submarine went missing. Recorded by the Admiralty as another terrible K-class training accident, and lost with all hands, a young journalist named Arthur Waite, from the Plymouth Herald, started digging around.’

  ‘What did he find out?’

  ‘Not much. He had an insider in the Plymouth naval base who alleged that the submarine was tasked with lengthy ocean treks and that every voyage was fitted out and undertaken under a cloak of secrecy. The vessel was away for months at a time and was never involved in training exercises.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘A reference to Scorpion. The wife of the First Officer, who we now know is the corpse found in the sand, was so angry at what she considered to be a cover-up that she met with Arthur. She agreed to talk about her husband’s last mission but only on the proviso that her information was anonymous and would not be used to undermine the war effort.’

  They paused to refresh their glasses and snuggled closer on the blanket, momentarily losing themselves in the shimmering dance of the flames.

  ‘Her husband had told her that there were several secret bases well away from British shores where something was being invented, presumably to help win the war. The K-45 would sail with large sums in gold, which were exchanged for unknown prototypes or progress reports. The submarine was crewed with experienced submariners and the captain, a man named Barrett, was very highly regarded by the Royal Navy.’

  ‘Not much to go on.’

  Pace smiled and kissed her softly on the mouth. ‘Pillow talk only goes so far, I guess.’ She kissed him back, flicking her tongue provocatively across his lips, then frowned.

  ‘There must be more to it. Any idea?’

 
‘Only that she believed her husband had died a long way from home.’ He sipped his champagne again. ‘Oh, and the fact that Arthur suffered an unfortunate accident later that week, just as he was preparing to publish an exposé. It appears that he and a friend, who just happened to be a worker at the naval base, decided to go for a late night dip together from a nearby beach. Tragically, both drowned.’

  ‘Convenient,’ sighed Sarah, feeling momentarily sad for the plucky young reporter. Then another thought struck her. ‘Hold on a minute,’ she frowned. ‘If he died, how do we know about the meeting?’

  ‘His editor, an old pro called William Alderman, had a copy of the article to proofread. He suspected foul play and destroyed the full article, instead printing just the basic facts I’ve mentioned. A week later, after a vicious public backlash against the paper for daring to question the integrity of the British government in a time of war, he was forced to step down. The paper printed a retraction and apology whilst old Alderman ended up arrested, certified as mentally ill and imprisoned in a high security mental hospital.’

  Sarah knew what was coming. ‘Let me guess,’ she speculated. ‘Later found dead?’

  The increased evening chill in the air was echoed in Pace’s confirmation. ‘Found hanging in his cell. Suicide driven by guilt, according to the papers.’ The first spits of rain began to fall from the dark sky, adding to the dampening mood.

  ‘Naturally. Poor sod was just trying to tell the truth. Murdered by their own country.’

  ‘Telling the truth in wartime is often a dangerous pastime,’ agreed Pace.

  They left the fire to die on its own and relocated to the command centre. It was pleasantly warm as they settled onto a sofa, pausing only long enough to make a pot of coffee. Pace continued the story.

  ‘Mrs Pringle was painted as a grief-stricken widow, out of her mind from the sudden loss of her heroic husband. She was given an enhanced pension and never spoke publicly about the matter again. She moved to Canada a few years later.’

  Sarah McEntire had been mulling over everything and she still kept coming back to the same issue. Why did it matter? The gold would be worth a fortune, true, but how was it a national security issue today? It could only be related to the secret project but that was crazy. Decades before the dawn of nuclear weapons, how could anything created so long ago have any impact in the modern world? She shared her thoughts with James.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he agreed with her. ‘Obviously, whoever is commissioning us to solve the mystery does have some information that even your father can’t get his hands on. We won’t know until we find that submarine, and the base that it was visiting.’

  ‘Bases, you mean.’ Sarah’s face formed a thoughtful pout. ‘The Namibian drop was the last of three. If the gold was split three ways, only some of it is still inside the K-45? Whatever they were inventing might have been spread over all three sites, like a modern company which draws components from several sites and then assembles the finished product in one place.’

  Pace had been thinking the same thing, which was where the problem came. The old diary pages had given general bearing, headings and travel time but no specific coordinates to any of the rendezvous sites. Finding the submarine’s watery grave and the gold would be difficult enough but uncovering three secret military laboratories, lost for one hundred years, would be almost impossible.

  He also knew something else. Other people must have seen the diary on its journey from Africa to the Admiralty. That meant they might not be the only people trying to find the wreck and bring Scorpion out into the open.

  The facts were still running in circles around his mind when a firm, sensuous kiss dispelled all thoughts of lost treasure and dead submariners from his head.

  Sarah stood up from the sofa and placed her hands on her hips, daring him forward. He rose quickly and pulled her in to a tight embrace, their tongues wetly probing together. With her hair in his face, and a scent of lavender and orchid richly pervading his nostrils, their kisses grew more passionate until they were tearing off each other’s clothes and falling, naked, back down on to the sofa.

  With Sarah beneath him, Pace started to kiss down her beautiful body, starting at her earlobes and taking his time, nibbling, licking and planting delicate kisses on her breasts, flowering nipples, stomach and legs. As Sarah began to gently writhe in anticipation, he worked all the way down to her toes and then back up again, with excruciating deliberation.

  Finally, gently parting her legs, he focused delicately upon her swollen, shaven folds, breathing in her heady musk. Rapidly sensing her approaching climax, unable to wait any longer, Sarah pulled his head up from between her legs and crushed her lips on his again, tasting herself as she guided him inside her. Pulling him down hard on top of her, clamping their hips together by hooking her legs together behind his back, they became one.

  Moving as one, they peaked together a few minutes later, their kisses becoming less inflamed and increasingly tender as the waves of mutual ecstasy subsided. For both of them, it was so much more than just a physical act. They then lay, in the afterglow, revelling in watch other’s warmth and a shared sense of genuine belonging.

  Whatever life threw at them, they would face it together.

  3

  The heat inside the carriage was stifling and the man muttered curses under his breath about the lack of air conditioning. He was not surprised by the unpleasant travelling conditions, as he travelled London’s tube network five days every week, forty-eight weeks of each year.

  His job as a filing and records clerk for the British Admiralty had always meant him having to commute into the centre of London from his humble two-bedroom house in the satellite town of Basildon, in Essex. For eighteen years, he had taken the mainline train into Liverpool Street station before jumping onto several different tube lines until he arrived at work, invariably hot and irritable, even in winter.

  The only difference today was that he was riding a section of the tube he never normally used. The cramped, overcrowded conditions remained the same but his normal lacklustre attitude to the journey had vanished. There was much more at stake today than just ensuring he got to work on time. He could not afford to miss this appointment.

  His heart pounded painfully in his chest and his grotesquely obese body poured sweat from every pore, soaking his shirt so heavily that the moisture was now clearly visible beneath the armpits of his suit jacket. Thin black hair, flecked with untreated dandruff and receding at the temples looked more absurd by being tied off in a short ponytail at the back. A bushy, greying beard and yellowing teeth, from years of heavy smoking, did little to improve his appearance. Loosening his tie did little good in cooling him down but it served to sooth him psychologically for a few minutes.

  After five minutes, the train rattled into the station and he hauled himself off of the two seats that his excessive buttocks had occupied, then trudged heavily through the doors and onto the dirt-stained concrete platform. The doors slid shut almost immediately behind him but he was already off and walking towards the exit.

  Peter Wormly was a traitor, and he didn’t mind a bit. Overlooked for promotion more times than he cared to admit, he had always simply chosen to blame his superiors and to totally ignore his own lazy, arrogant incompetence.

  So when they had approached him, asking him to use his position within the Admiralty to ferret out certain key documents and records from time to time, he had seen it as life finally dealing him a winning hand. The money offered was more than he could ever have imagined and the risks were low. He was now a very happy man.

  Wormly did not have the highest security access by any means, in fact even after nearly two decades working within the records department, his level of access remained moderate. His lowly clerk’s role, however, did entail him having to access secure areas in order to return files that were requested by his managers from time to time. He was never allowed to open them, his was just a filing task, but it did mean that he was allowed phys
ical access to the secure archives tucked away behind ten-inch thick steel doors and protected by coded locks.

  For the external power involved, he was the perfect spy. He was unobtrusive and so overlooked by his own people that he had long ceased to qualify for detailed security checks or updates. Wormly was a genuine invisible man, weakened by greed and self-importance. They would have killed him if their initial contact had been spurned but they had figured the man to be a safe bet and were not surprised when their offer of cash for occasional secrets had been immediately accepted.

  The first meeting had been at Wormly’s house, on a Sunday evening a few months previously. Two men had turned up, pretending initially to be local government inspectors checking out a noise complaint. After confirming his identity they had wasted no time in explaining their true intentions and laying out their offer. They had left ten thousand pounds in cash, as a sweetener, and promised a further one hundred thousand pounds, each and every time that he did a job for them.

  The ten thousand had already gone, gobbled up on expensive dinners for one and some top-of-the-range electronic goods. Wormly had been eager to get his first job and now he was almost there. Clutching the large, brown, padded envelope to his sweaty chest, he could still hardly believe how easy it had all been, or how close he now was to collecting his first large payday.

  Once outside the tube station, Wormly breathed a deep sigh and stared up and down the congested city road, feeling the sickly tang of petrol fumes tickling the base of his throat. Twenty-three stone was a great deal of weight to cart around and he would have normally looked to hail a taxi, or at least haul himself to the nearest bus stop.

  Unfortunately for him, the instructions had been explicit. He was to ride the train and then walk the two miles to the exchange point. He had been dreading the walk for days; it made him breathless just thinking about the distance involved, but his hands were tied. His greed far outweighed his fear of exercise.